


The Harbinger

by ArthurianScribe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Rigel Black Chronicles - murkybluematter
Genre: Angst, Chronic Illness, Don't say I didn't warn you, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fainting, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by The Rigel Black Chronicles, Inspired by the Pureblood Pretense, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, No beta we die like mne, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Original Male Character - Freeform, POV Multiple, POV Remus Lupin, POV Sirius Black, The Ambiguous Artiface, The Futile Facade, The Pureblood Pretense, The Serpentine Subterfuge, author mostly just wanted to vent and this happened, because she has an undiagnosed terminal illness, i didn't invent her but the fanfic this is based on did, i'm weirdly proud of how this turned out, if that's triggering for you please don't read, if you haven't read RBC you really should, its archie, its diana guys, let remus say fuck 2020, murkybluematter, no one dies here but you guys know what happens to Diana, prequel for canonical character death, this whole fic is about a character who faints unexpectedly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27657710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArthurianScribe/pseuds/ArthurianScribe
Summary: Diana Black had always considered herself lucky, but everyone's luck runs out eventually.Or,Sometimes we begin to recognize that something is wrong gradually, and other times it life decides to punch us in the face.
Relationships: Sirius Black & Remus Lupin, Sirius Black/Diana Black, Sirius Black/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	The Harbinger

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Pureblood Pretense](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/39096) by murkybluematter. 



Diana had always considered herself lucky. People had always made a point of telling her she should, after all. First, her parents were telling her how lucky she was to be born into the right kind of family, that she was Light, that they were so forgiving of her unladylike rambunctiousness. Later, it was her classmates telling her how lucky she was to be in the right House, to be made a prefect, to have caught the eye of resident scoundrel Sirius Black.

She had agreed with them that she certainly was lucky that Sirius liked her as much as she did him, but she really had to laugh at the hubbub. He’d had no success reclaiming his devil-may-care image after she’d caught him sneaking chocolate frogs into the bags of homesick first years when he thought no one was looking.

Mostly though, Diana knew that she had been lucky in life because somehow she had found herself not only with a wonderful husband and a son she loved more than anything, but also a supportive honorary family in Remus and the Potters and her clever little niece.

Yes, it was clear Diana had been lucky. But everyone’s luck runs out eventually.

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The day that everything changed had started out so routine that she never would have remembered it if it didn’t so clearly define their lives into the Before and the After.

Diana was slowly bumping around the kitchen, trying to prepare a simple breakfast for her family as she usually did. She was never exactly what you would call a morning person, but it was worth sacrificing an extra fifteen minutes of sleep in the mornings to make sure that her boys remembered to eat something before tearing out of the house in search of the day’s adventure.

Normally, that just meant cracking and scrambling a few eggs and charming a couple of pieces of toast. She could hardly get Archie to sit still long enough to get him to eat once he had decided it was time to go see Harry (let alone force some juice into him as well), and she didn’t hate her husband’s coworkers enough to further enable Sirius’s coffee habit. The man’s mouth hardly stopped as it was, and Diana wasn’t going to forget the pre-NEWT disaster of seventh year anytime soon.

Today, however, Diana was feeling charitable. She’d been so tired lately, and she knew Sirius had been stressed with one of those cases that left his eyes haunted for days afterward. Surely, it wouldn’t hurt to compromise by brewing a pot of black tea for them both.

With her course decided and a few expert wand movements, she had the kettle bringing itself to a boil as she finished scrambling the eggs on the stove. She had just switched off the burner and spun to reach for the plates when her vision started to swim.

Diana stumbled a few steps over to a clear patch of countertop, gripping the cold, hard granite edge hard enough to leave an imprint on her palms.

 _Must have moved too quickly_ , she told herself. It was fine. That happened to everyone, and it would pass in a few moments.

But it wasn’t passing. If anything, it was getting worse. What had started as just some vertigo and a bit of fuzziness around the periphery had gradually taken over her vision until she could only see a bit out of the very center.

As she just tried to focus on getting her breathing under control, she noticed detachedly that the ringing sound she could hear getting louder and louder wasn’t actually the kettle. It was just her ears. Her ears were ringing. _That’s a bad sign, isn’t it?_ She was pretty sure that was a bad sign.

She knew she should do something but her thoughts felt so disjointed. It was like there was a disconnect between the part of her in the distance that was growing increasingly alarmed and the more present part that was trying to give her instructions. Her thoughts felt like they were swimming through molasses to try and she was just so confused. This wasn’t really happening. She didn’t even know what _this_ was, but it definitely wasn’t happening to _her_. She was fine. She was fine. She…She should really try to sit down now.

Diana pushed away from the countertop, stumbling towards the little dining table they had set up next to the kitchen and groping around for the chair. She couldn’t see anything anymore at this point and she could hear nothing but a steady and deafening sound. Like a chime that had been rung but was charmed to increase in volume rather than fading away.

But it would be fine. She just had to make it to the chair. If it occurred to her at all that she could have just sat down in the floor where she was (and she honestly could never have told you if it had), she must have dismissed it. She refused to consider the possibility that she may have been afraid that in trying to sit down she might have just fallen down. She just had to make it to the chair.

Her blindly grasping hand struck something and she thought she might have pulled…

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Sirius was awake in an instant which was strange enough in itself. Usually, he was one to lie in bed for a few more moments before indulging in a languid stretch.

Then, he’d pry himself out of bed, somehow manage to coax Archie out of his blanket nest, and be back to his normal chipper self by the time he made it down to the kitchen to kiss his lovely wife.

That was their routine. But something was off today, and Sirius awoke to a feeling of _wrongness_ that only got worse when he realized he had woken up several minutes before his alarm spell went off. He must have heard something.

Like a switch going off, Sirius immediately became Auror Black and had his wand out in front of him as he crept down the hall towards the kitchen instead of peeling off towards Archie’s bedroom.

As he went, Sirius reached out to the wards, testing them. The wards didn’t register any visitors, not even a precocious niece who had gotten up early and decided everyone else was taking to long as he had half hoped. Rather than being reassured by the lack of a noticeable threat, Sirius’s unease only grew. Something was very, very wrong.

Sirius continued to slowly creep down the stairs towards the kitchen. Hoping fervently that perhaps his wife had just dropped a dish and that that was what his sleeping mind had heard but knowing that a dish would not have been nearly loud enough to have been heard from their room.

After what felt like an eternity, Sirius was silently padding down the last of the stairs to the main level when his sensitive ears picked up a strange sound. It was stuck somewhere between a high-pitched whine and a low moan, but somehow neither. Where a normal whine or moan would fluctuate, would have a clear beginning and end, this sound just droned on at a constant pitch and volume. Sirius felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise up, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because he was coming around the doorway into the kitchen with his wand raised and then just as quickly his arm was falling because he was running faster than he had moved in his life.

He was moving before he had even realized what he was seeing. The part of his brain that sounded like James on Auror business was telling him what to do while the rest of him just kept of a mantra of _notgoodnotgoodnotgoodnotgood_.

Because Diana was just sitting there in the floor of the kitchen. One of the dining table chairs was sitting tipped over next to her…and her chin was bleeding…and she was just _sitting there_ with a placid look on her face as she remained totally oblivious to his increasingly frantic presence.

Or…not just sitting there, he amended. No, as he fell to his knees in front of her he saw that she had started doing something with her hands. She was bringing them up from where they curled against her chest to tap her ears as she continued to stare blankly ahead. Then, she was bringing them to cover her eyes like some sick parody of _see no evil, hear no evil_.

He didn’t realize he was moving until saw his hands framing her face, turning it to face him. Her hands went from her eyes to reaching out in front of her with jerky movements that were so unlike his graceful wife that he wanted to sob. He held off on the sobbing though, instead keeping up a litany of _Diana…Diana…Can you look at me baby?...Diana…_ until her eyes seemed a little less glassy, and he could see her gaze trying to focus on him.

“Sir— Siri—”

Sirius had never hated his name more than that moment, as he watched his wife try to get her mouth to cooperate long enough to say it. As he watched her face start shifting from placed and confused to terrified and confused as she realized she couldn’t. Her blinking was growing more forceful as her eyes opened impossibly wider.

“Hey, hey, hey…It’s alright…You’re alright…” he murmured in the voice usually reserved for frightened children and traumatized witnesses. He had never wanted to use his Auror skills on his family, but right now he was pretty sure that the crisis management training was the only thing keeping him from falling apart right now. He could fall apart later when he was alone or over a drink with Remus and James but right now Diana needed him at his best.

Trying to hold onto his resolve while it lasted, Sirius gently tilted Diana’s face back towards him from where she had started staring at the fallen chair with a heartbreakingly lost expression. Her eyes snapped back to him as they did, and he was glad to see her gaze looking increasingly lucid.

“Sirius.”

He nodded with a tight smile that he knew didn’t reach his eyes but seemed to do the trick.

“Did…Did I fall?” She looked so young all of a sudden, even if she was only in her late twenties. There was just something so vulnerable about her expression that left him with a deep ache in his gut.

He forced another attempt at a reassuring smile. “I think you may have fainted, love. But we’re going to get you to St. Mungo’s, and everything is going to be fine.”

She gave a shaky nod and let him help her up. He guided her with one hand on her elbow and the other arm around her waist towards the floo room. They made it about halfway there before Diana stopped in her tracks so suddenly that Sirius’s momentum almost knocked them both over.”

“Are you alright?” he said, as he looked her over in a panic.

“Archie,” she insisted. “Someone needs to stay with Archie!”

Sirius cursed internally because she was right. Archie would be waking up sooner rather than later and Lily and Harry would be expecting him to show up for their shared lessons within the hour. James would be at or on his way to work already and he didn’t want to frighten Harry by showing up to Potter Place in this state anyway. And there was absolutely no world in which Sirius Black would send his wife on alone. That really only left one person. He just hoped he was home.

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Remus was, in fact, home. If he was being honest, it was rare that he wasn’t in the mornings, since it wasn’t like he could hold down a job for very long but it did happen. Luckily, however, he was not only home but also awake and working on a new product for the Marauders line in the living room when Sirius came bursting through his Floo with a shout.

“MOONY”

“Siri—”

“No time to explain.” Sirius paused just long enough to suck in a deep breath. “Diana passed out and I have to take her to St. Mungo’s _right now_ and we need someone to stay with Archie so he doesn’t get scared or set the house on fire or something if he wakes up and we’re gone and _please, Moony_ we gotta go, there’s no _time_ ” he rambled, already pulling Remus along after him by the wrist.

Remus was reeling from both the information and because he had never seen the perpetually calm and collected Sirius Black look so wrecked, so terrified. He grabbed Sirius’s arm with his free hand and pulled him to a stop.

Sirius whirled around and opened his mouth, no doubt ready to spit barbs in true Black fashion, but Remus was having none of it.

“I need you to breathe, Sirius. If you fuck up your Floo address and end up on the wrong side of the country because you wouldn’t stop to take a breath you won’t be any help to Diana.”

Sirius visibly deflated but he also stopped to take a few shuddering breaths before speaking, so Remus was going to count that as a win.

“I’m so fucking scared, Moony,” he whispered. “I came in and her eyes…it was like she wasn’t even _there_.” He cut himself off to take another shuddering breath, and finally made eye contact with Remus. “I just have this feeling that something’s really wrong and _I’m so fucking scared_.”

Remus felt something cold run down his spine when he realized Sirius was trembling. The unflappable Sirius Black was trembling.

Remus swallowed and started to gently turn Sirius back towards the Floo, one arm moving up to wrap around Sirius’s shoulder as he did. “Everything’s going to be fine, Sirius. Diana’s tough and we’re all in your corner.” They reached the fireplace and Remus reached up for a handful of Floo powder. “I’ll take care of Archie and let the Auror Department know you won’t be in today. Now, take a deep breath and we’ll go get your wife, okay?”

Remus didn’t think he’d ever thought or said so much about breathing in such a short amount of time before but it seemed to do the trick. The tension in Sirius’s shoulders only eased the slightest bit but he at least appeared less on the verge of mental breakdown as he straightened up with a nod and gestured for Remus to throw in the Floo powder.

As his friend disappeared with a barked “No. 12 Grimmauld Place,” Remus knew his friend would survive whatever came of today, but Remus would have given anything so that he didn’t have to.

**Author's Note:**

> So... I should definitely be working on Bora Bora, but I got annoyed with how fainting tends to be romanticized in fiction and got really annoyed because you almost never read anything that explains how horrible and traumatic an experience it can be, especially when you don't know why. I based the whole fainting scene here off of the first time I fainted, so everything Diana does is something that I remember or that my mother saw/heard when she found me after hearing me fall. (If you're wondering what's going on with the covering her eyes and ears thing, that's something I remember from after I regained consciousness but before the tunnel vision and ringing in my ears stopped. I was super confused and was trying to make sure that my eyes and ears were still there and working, so I projected it onto Diana). Anyway, basically this is just me trying to work through some issues, but I hope it brings someone some enjoyment. I may or may not come back and write more about while Diana was sick, but i haven't decided yet.


End file.
